Woods hopes to find magic at Cog Hill

During Tiger Woods' last visit to Cog Hill, he was reconfirming for everyone that he might be the best ever to play the game. He torched Rees Jones' redesign with a course-record 62 on Saturday en route to an 8-shot victory in the BMW Championship.

Since then, we've also heard Mr. Woods had more than golf on his mind during his stay in Chicago. And, well, you know the rest.

Mr. Woods returned to Cog Hill on Wednesday, still in search of some equilibrium both on the course and within his life. He even opened his press conference with a joke about the status of his game.

"Yeah, it's good to be here," Mr. Woods said. "It's even better to be in the event."

Mr. Woods hardly was a sure thing to make the field for the BMW Championship, which begins Thursday at Cog Hill. The No. 1 ranked player in the world has been flirting with elimination during the first two tournaments of the FedEx Cup playoff series.

However, much to the relief of BMW and PGA Tour officials, Mr. Woods pulled his game together enough to finish tied for 11th at the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday. That moved him to 51st on the FedEx points list, well within the top 70 required to qualify for the BMW.

Still, Mr. Woods needs to do some more work to move into the top 30 and earn a spot in the Tour Championship in a couple of weeks.

All the will-he-or-won't-he talk still seems strange given Mr. Woods' previous chokehold on golf. Incredible as it sounds, Mr. Woods has only two top 10 finishes in 11 starts this year, and none in his last six starts.

Normally, you could say Cog Hill might be the remedy Mr. Woods needs to turn the corner. He has won here five times.

"It's always nice to come back to a venue where you've won in different ways," Mr. Woods said. "I can always kind of go back to that no matter how I'm playing. I can still figure out a way to get it done because I've done it different ways."

However, the whole Woods track record theory doesn't seem to apply this year. He fell flat at St. Andrews for the British Open, where he was considered to be a lock, and flamed out at the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone, where he won seven times.

Mr. Woods remains very much a work in progress in post-scandal mode. On the personal front, he says things are calming down as he adjusts to being a divorced father of two children.

"Certainly life has become much more in balance," Mr. Woods said. "The whole idea is to have life in balance."

Clearly, the upheaval affected his game more than anybody could have anticipated. Wednesday, he said he didn't work with a coach in June and July because "I didn't want to have any more information.

"I was trying to get adjusted to my new life and what that entailed, and it was enough as it was."

When his game crashed in August, Mr. Woods finally turned to new instructor Sean Foley, although he won't come out and say he is his coach.

"He's coaching me," he said.

When asked if he was paying Mr. Foley, Mr. Woods said, "That's none of your business."

Mr. Woods still appears to be in the process of committing to Mr. Foley's methods. He says he is seeing progress. After opening with a 72 last week, he went 65-69-68 in the final three rounds. It was his best stretch in a while.

"I'm headed in the right direction," Mr. Woods said.

Yet when asked what it would mean to him to win this week, Mr. Woods said, "It obviously would be a good step in the right direction, but we've got four days, and just got to keep plodding along."

Plodding along? That's a far cry from the player who shot a 62 here 12 months ago.

In Mr. Woods' world, last September does seem like a long time ago, doesn't it?